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Veritas Capital (“Veritas”), a leading investor at the intersection of technology and government, today announced that an affiliate of Veritas has completed the purchase of Wood Mackenzie from Verisk (Nasdaq: VRSK).
Waste-based biofuels could be a key driver of the energy transition transforming today’s limited supply of low carbon transportation fuels and creating a local, circular economy, according to a new report by Wood Mackenzie, a Verisk business (Nasdaq:VRSK).
War in Ukraine is transforming the outlook for the supply, demand and price of hydrocarbons and the pace and cost of the energy transition. While the precise timing and implementation of future bans on Russian commodity imports are difficult to predict, a rewriting of energy trade flows is now underway.
Plastic pollution caught and maintained the world’s attention in the mid-2010s as images of marine environments ravaged by deposits of disposed plastic led global governments and corporations to commit to improving the circular plastic economy.
Stemming the flow of plastics into the environment will need ‘more than a nip and tuck approach’ if the world is to reach peak plastic and meet the net zero challenge, says Wood Mackenzie.
A high carbon tax could erode up to 60% of Asia’s total refining earnings by 2027, says Wood Mackenzie, at the Global Energy Summit Focus Week.
Despite the ‘war on plastics’, demand over the coming decades will be robust, underpinned by the growing global middle-class and the material requirements of the energy transition.
The EU Commission proposed a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) as part of today’s “Fit for 55” package. James Whiteside, global head of multi-commodity research at Wood Mackenzie, said: “As the first mechanism of its kind, the CBAM is being designed in consultation with industry to avoid unintended consequences. “A CBAM that does not cover a substantial portion of the production chain will encourage carbon leakage - pushing emissions beyond the borders of the EU or shifting competition between EU and non-EU producers to the next stage of the value chain.”
Plastic packaging redesign, which includes elimination, substitution and reuse approaches, could reduce global plastic packaging demand in 2050 from 190MT to 150MT, according to a new analysis from Wood Mackenzie’s Cross-Polymer Demand Model.
Last month’s winter storm paralysed the US petrochemical industry. Operations at US Gulf Coast petrochemical facilities have yet to fully recover one month after freezing temperatures triggered wide-spread power outages and plant shutdowns.
This week’s winter storm has paralysed US petrochemical production and disrupted 15% of the global olefins market, according to Wood Mackenzie.
As the US deals with this week’s winter storm, refining and petrochemicals outages could have an impact on the global polyester chain, according to Wood Mackenzie.
2020 was a difficult year for the world’s refineries as the coronavirus pandemic reduced refinery utilisation and OPEC+ supply restraint narrowed crude price differentials. Despite this, integrated refinery and petrochemical sites significantly outperformed their fuels-only peers, according to Wood Mackenzie.
If the plastics value chain is to become more sustainable, the industry must focus on reducing the amount of mismanaged waste and recapturing as much of its value as possible. To do this, more investment must be allocated to chemical recycling technologies, according to Wood Mackenzie.
The Democrats are expected to retain control of the US House of Representatives, but the Senate will be determined by upcoming run-offs in the state of Georgia. While the chemicals sector is expected to see few direct impacts, there are several themes that should be watched closely.
In order to achieve the scale needed to play a meaningful role, the bioplastics industry will require significant regulatory interventions from governments and substantial cost efficiencies as technologies mature and scale, according to Wood Mackenzie.
The plastics industry requires a paradigm shift towards an absolute decoupling of materials consumption from growth of the economy if it is to achieve sustainability targets, according to new research from Wood Mackenzie.
China’s purified terephthalic acid (PTA) producers have been using the futures market to price PTA in the spot market, hedge against risks and manage inventory. This has allowed many to stay profitable, despite market uncertainty and disruption brought by the coronavirus pandemic, says Wood Mackenzie.
Steve Jenkins, vice president of Wood Mackenzie’s petrochemicals team, comments on this morning’s announcement from BP that it is selling its petrochemicals business to INEOS in a US$5 billion deal.
Global polyester production is expected to decline by more than half a million tonnes this year. For polyester’s key raw materials, paraxylene (PX) and PTA, the knock-on effects will hit global demand in the coming years.
Approximately 15% of ethane-based ethylene supply in the Middle East could be lost this year due to oil supply dynamics, according to new analysis from Wood Mackenzie. This equates to around 1.5 million tons of ethylene.
Europe saw a 20-year low in olefins production in 2019. Despite the coronavirus hitting demand, 2020 could show a recovery in production.
The UK currently recovers or recycles just under 50% of plastics packaging, making it a middling performer in European terms
Overall flexible packaging demand in Asia grew by 4.8% in 2019, down from 5.6% in 2018. This was mainly due to slower growth rates in major national markets, according to Wood Mackenzie.
The Chinese economy and the country's polyester and textile industries could be under pressure as a result of the new coronavirus outbreak. Drawing a parallel with the SARS crisis in 2003, polyester demand may weaken as business activities stall.
Wood Mackenzie expects the combined capacity expansion of base olefins - ethylene, propylene and butadiene - to hit unprecedented levels of around 20 million tonnes in 2020. This represents an increase of 6% on 2019 levels.
In a recently published report, Wood Mackenzie predicts the start of a downcycle in China’s petrochemical industry. A supply overhang has already hit the country’s paraxylene (PX) market, with olefins and polyolefins markets almost certain to face the same.
Chinese polyester market growth is expected to sit at just below 3% in 2020, a marked decline from the strong growth seen between 2018 and 2019. This dip in performance is mainly due to slashed growth for bottle-grade PET, according to Wood Mackenzie.
2019 has been a year of successes within the recycled PET (RPET) industry.
The global Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene (BOPP) film market has seen demand grow by just under 5% per annum over the last five years. The main driver of growth has been the demand for flexible packaging, particularly in China and South East Asia, according to Wood Mackenzie’s latest ‘BOPP Film Global Supply Demand Report’.
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